Team Visio, “Joker. Anatomy of an Icon”

From a printed grin to the shadows of the big screen — a journey into the myth of the world’s most famous jester — Full-color images

From the pages of Batman #1 (1940) to the unsettling reflections of Todd Phillips’ Joker, this volume retraces over eighty years of metamorphoses of the character who turned laughter into madness and the mask into a social mirror. A visual and narrative essay intertwining comics, cinema, pop culture and the psychology of evil, showing how the Joker became far more than a villain: a modern icon of chaos, freedom and disillusionment.

The journey begins at the origin of the sign, where the Joker’s imagery draws from the 19th-century wild card and the Fool of tarot: the “rule-breaking” card and the liminal figure that authorizes exception. From there the icon takes on a face with The Man Who Laughs (1928) and multiplies over decades of images: from Cesar Romero’s televised smile to Jack Nicholson’s disturbing elegance, from Heath Ledger’s anarchic fury to Joaquin Phoenix’s tragic humanity.

The book explores the many incarnations of the “Clown Prince of Crime” across comics, film, serialized media and visual arts. Joker as a mirror of modernity — and of our need to look at chaos, and laugh.